Europe, a moon of Jupiter, could have the elements to sustain life

A satellite from the space agency that investigated Jupiter and its moons for 14 years flew through a huge plume of water vapor that emerged from the surface of Europe in the form of a geyser.

A new analysis of the measurements made by the NASA spacecraft Galileo more than 20 years ago in the ice sheet of Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, has revealed that it could have enough ingredients to sustain life.

The new report points out that Galileo, a satellite that investigated Jupiter and its moons for almost 14 years, flew through a huge plume of water vapor that emerged from the icy surface of Europa in the form of a geyser and reached a height of hundreds of meters. kilometers, according to the researchers.

The study, led by Xianzhe Jia, of the University of Michigan, seems to confirm an idea that already arose from observations of the Hubble Space Telescope taken in 2012.

"The data was already there, but we needed advanced technology to make sense of the observations," Jia said in a statement.

In 1997, when the Galileo spacecraft was flying about 200 kilometers above the surface of Europe, the team in charge did not suspect that the satellite had pierced a plume of water vapor from the icy moon.

"If we can take samples directly from the interior of Europe, we can see more clearly if it has the ingredients for life," said Robert Pappalardo, a scientist at NASA's Europa Clipper mission, a mission that could be launched in June 2022.

The hidden waters of Europe have become a major goal in the search for extraterrestrial life, and sending a spacecraft to take a sample of that type of geyser could be the "most practical" way to verify it, the scientists said.